


baseball & those who watch

by cassthecryptid



Category: Smosh
Genre: High School AU, M/M, SmoshWritingWeek2019, SmoshWritingWeek2019 - Day Two, baseball player!wes, delinquent/photo nerd!joven, it's late but WHATEVER, there's mentions of sex and shit but nothing super explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 18:41:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassthecryptid/pseuds/cassthecryptid
Summary: “How do you even love someone from afar?” Her snickers shattered him in every instance. “It’s so stupid.” Joven caught her eyes, which rolled across his skin like smooth black marbles, cold as an ice cube under his tongue. “You just like his ass. Admit it. That’s why you dragged me here. You want me to convince you that all you like is the sounds you’re pervertedly imagining he’d make when you push him against a wall.”





	baseball & those who watch

Joven didn’t expect him to show up. 

He sat in one of those small booths outside the diner, a cigarette barely hanging on to the bit of sweat on the edge of his lip. His stomach was nothing but tangled wires, and it felt like every time he moved even a few inches they swirled around like he’d tossed them in a broken washing machine, and now they circled around and around, never ending. 

Joven felt himself move to grab the leather jacket that normal clung to his shoulders, finding himself cold and a little exposed without it. Last time he’d seen it, it’d been on the floor, and then there’d been those green eyes and-

His face flushed as he thought of the party again. _He_ _wasn’t even supposed to be there._ _He_ _wasn’t even supposed to be gay._ And yet…

Joven took a bigger drag on the cigarette, feeling the heat sting the back of his throat. He pulled it away with his fingertips, tapping it on the table as he felt his eyes water. Joven wouldn’t let himself cough, instead squeezing his eyes shut until the pain subsided. 

His fingers itched for something to do, hungering for his phone, for something to distract him from this, but he knew that he’d just read back the texts; the short brief messages that had killed any hope of something more, and had begun to reawaken the cold, cavernous, cavity that collected all of the hatred he had for himself. 

_It was a mistake_ . He repeated those words to himself so much he managed to make it feel more like the truth. _I didn’t go there to do...that...I didn’t want…_

Joven jabbed the cigarette back between his lips before he could let them tingle with the warmth they’d pressed over the soft, cool skin that sent his heart thundering louder than he could control. 

_-_ 

_“How do you even love someone from afar?” Her snickers shattered him in every instance. “It’s so stupid.” Joven caught her eyes, which rolled across his skin like smooth black marbles, cold as an ice cube under his tongue. “You just like his ass. Admit it. That’s why you dragged me here. You want me to convince you that all you like is the sounds you’re pervertedly imagining he’d make when you push him against a wall.”_

_“It’s not-”_

_She careened forward to catch his expression over the side of the fence.“It’s not what?” Her voice was muddled in his mind. “Not true? Not right?”_

_He slammed his palms down on the fence, feeling it rattle beneath him as he gripped it tightly. “It’s not_ like _that.”_

_For the first time, Joven looked up again, his gaze running along the stretch of the field, past the left fielder, knocking off the first base, and lurching towards the pitcher’s mound._

_And there, standing on it like a statue carved perfect and,_ straight-

_-_

The neon lights of the diner sign droned on with its low, persistent grovel. It splashed mixing hues of pink and blue onto the ground, and across the palms of his hands. He held them to the light, letting the two colors separate, before slowly dropping them back to his lap, coloring his fingertips a muddy purple.

 _She was right_ . _She’s always right._

Joven had taken Mari with him to the baseball game. More or less he’d let her buckle herself into his truck and then locked the doors. 

He never got close, he liked watching him from afar. It was that collapse of fantasy that truly scared him, the second where he changed Joven’s expectations that it all fell. He knew that it would end eventually.

Whether it was when he realized that Joven was watching on the sidelines for more than just photos for the school newspaper, or if they accidentally bumped into each other in the hall, and he shoved Joven into a locker like the rules of the high school food chain decreed, he knew that the collapse would be brief, but earth shattering.

He hadn’t meant to become enthralled like that, his thoughts clouded with the puffy life-filled dreams of someone he was certain he could never have, but-

_-_

_“So it’s an interview?”_

_“Are you deaf?” The editor looked up at him with those blank, empty eyes that always ran a chill down his spine. “Just go to the game, take photos of the team, go home. You don’t even have to stay for the entire thing.” He turned his head down to the piece he was editing, rubbing the side of his nose. “Boring as hell anyway.”_

_“Just photos?”_

_There was a pause, and Joven had grabbed his things off of the table before the editor had a chance to bark at him again._

_It was overcast when he took his camera and a pack of cigarettes out to the back of the field. He lit one up, placing it in the crook of his mouth before uncapping his camera and bringing it up to his eye._

_The game was mediocre, and the players reflected that. It was as if the school had taken their full budget, and shoved it into the uniforms. That seemed to be its only redeeming quality. Joven wished he’d brought somebody with him, or at least, something more than cigarettes to entertain himself._

_But he brought the camera to his eye again._

_And found himself lost in the swing of an arm, and the curve of a ball from perfect fingertips. Soft lips that puckered like rose petals, eyes hidden beneath the tipped cap, and hair, spilling around his face like stolen moonlight._

_-_ 

Nobody read the newspaper. 

It was why Joven had even signed up for it in the first place. Something to place on his college resume that wasn’t a folder thick with detention slips, or a minor drug charge back when he was spending every night with a friend whose hair flickered with flames. 

When he was approached by a cheery looking prep girl with dark brown hair with pink extensions, his first response was to tell her that he wasn’t the guy to buy weed from. 

_-_

 _“If I was buying weed from you,” she turned up her nose. It wasn’t in disgust, but as if it had humoured her. The girl chewed a piece of bubblegum, turning it over on her teeth. “I’d be_ much _poorer.”_

_“Then what do you want?” The editor of the newspaper, Sohinki, responded for him. He’d started slinking around with Mari recently, and the two of them lay against one another, moving their hands across each other’s bodies as if Joven wasn’t there._

_“The baseball team saw those photos you newspaper junkies took.”_

_Joven felt a knot in his stomach begin to wrap itself together over and over again as she spoke._

_“They want you to come to their party next week, after the closer.” She blew a bubble, the snap of it against her tongue making Joven jump. “Which is the final baseball game.”_

_“I know what it is,” Joven replied almost too quickly._

_“Though you might just be high all the time, didn’t know you were such a baseball savant.” The girl rolled her eyes. “Be there.” She_ _turned on heel, her hair fluttering out behind her as she waved a dismissive hand and the snap of bubblegum._

_-_ 

It was getting late now. 

Joven had checked and rechecked the time he swore he’d drained his battery down at least half. He’d told him to meet here. That’d he’d come. 

_He just wanted the damn leather jacket back, nothing more_ . Joven was a bad liar, even to himself, when no one else was there to speak to truth. It still rang whole in the pit of his stomach. _It don’t want to see him, it was a mistake. A mistake. It was all a series of bad mistakes. He should’ve realized sooner. The answer was held right in front of his face, close enough to touch, close enough to know, and he still blinded himself to it._

It was Mari that convinced him to go. 

Manipulated was a better word.

“Prove it.” Two words that flicked on the switch in his brain, that, no matter how hard he tried, wouldn’t turn off until he eventually failed. They held more meaning that he, the small minded fool he was, could even realize. He took it to mean that he should prove that he was invited to a party, not to be ridiculed, but accepted. But it meant more than that. A more that he wasn’t going to accept.

_-_

_“You really came.” The girl with the pink extensions greeted him at the door. “He said you might not.”_

_“Who?” Joven had barely stepped into the room before the girl shoved a cup into his hands._

_“The one you took the photo of.”_

_The music was loud, and the lights were low. It was everything of a high school party Joven had ever expected, and just as lonely. The house smelled of cheap beer and weed, and in every dark doorway, another couple was trying to find their privacy in a very public space._

_He found himself moving throughout the house, utterly uncomfortable with where he was, but somehow unable to leave. Joven felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, his toes locked over the side, steadying himself, but his center of gravity wobbled like a top, unsteady, uneasy._

_He finally stopped at the top of a banister, watching the sea of people convulsing to the music in their drunken stupor. His cup was empty by now, but he clung to it, it was his anchor, his hold on his world. Joven nearly snapped the plastic when a voice behind him spoke._

_Soft, clear as a bell, it shattered him._

_“She was right.”_

_Joven couldn’t speak, but instead, let his mouth droop open stupidly. The man standing behind him shook him, he was so familiar, but so unfamiliar at the same time. It was like seeing something on tv, a person, a car, a single object, and then seeing it in reality, and being so shaken by how it really looked._

_Lips puckered like petals, olive eyes hidden beneath the hair that spilled like stolen moonlight. He felt that if he reached out, the figure before him would disappear like mist, and scatter his mind like frightened deer._

_“I’ve seen you.” His voice hovered somewhere between the rush of morning traffic and nightly birdsong. “With your camera. You watch me, don’t you?”_

_“I’m not a perv-” The words stung his tongue as they were released. “I swear.” The addition didn't help, but Joven watched as his face pinched together, broadening into a grin that forced the words out of his mouth. “Is this you telling me to fuck off?”_

_“No.” He stepped forward. “I liked watching you too.”_

_“You-” Joven shook his head, feeling a warmth he hoped was the whiskey in his cup spreading throughout his cheeks. “How?”_

_He shrugged, “I notice people.” He fell in line with Joven against the banister. “And you don’t feel the superficial shit here, huh? You’re not tempted by it. I like that.” He shook his head, his hair fluttering like lilac against rose. “And when I saw that photo, I felt like you understood, something, more, somehow.”_

_“That makes no sense,” Joven’s words are whispered._

_“Does it have to make sense?”_

_“No.” His neck is curved like a sickle over Joven’s. Joven can taste his breath, sweet like wine, hot like sun, sharp like salt._

_Fingers trailed his skin, across his thigh, to touch a fingertip. It sent the heat on his face from the drink radiating across his body. They trailed up him until he could barely breathe, his hand shaking on the empty cup until it dropped to the ground._

_A finger brushed his collarbone, slowly tracing up his jaw to let a thumb trace the curve of his cheekbone. His lips were like roses, but he sunk himself into Joven like a thorn._

_Blind hands groped him as he was pulled towards an open door. And for once, he let himself go._

_If Mari was right about anything, it was the pleasure Joven took in the sounds the boy he’d pinned against the wall made as his mouth fell against his neck._

_-_

A car sped into the parking lot, but by then, Joven had already given up hope. 

He’d stood, stomping out his third cigarette under the dim flickering light flowing unevenly through the wide-eyed windows of the diner.

It was colder than he’d anticipated, and now goosebumps quivered over the surface of his skin. He squinted out into the lot, seeing a nicer car parking badly next to his own. A string of curse words a mile long were shouted under breath, but echoed in the emptiness around them.

The door slammed, and Joven watched as a figure trudged towards the diner. He felt his lips twitch just slightly. 

“You’re late.” He spoke just loudly enough for it to echo across the lot. The blue-pink shimmered against the lilac hair, and eyes glimmered with regret that stabbed through him. 

He expected him to stop short, to be disgusted by Joven standing in front of him. But he didn’t stop, his fingers found that place that made Joven melt, and he was kissing him again. 

It was enough to warm Joven from the tip of his nose to the base of his feet. 

He pulled away, his eyes searching with worry, and what Joven realized was an anxious twinge. “I’m sorry. Work held me up.” His eyes darted to the leather jacket curled over the boy’s arm. They then moved name tag clearly visible in the light of the diner. _Wes._

It was a beautiful name for a beautiful boy. 

“We should probably talk,” Joven whispered. 

“Do we need to?” He was now aware of the handful of Wes’s shirt he’d grabbed, tipping him downward.

Joven felt his stomach flutter, and he tightened his grip, and never let go.


End file.
